Consciousness Pervades All Forms, Beings and Entities in the Universal Creation

In his play Hamlet, William Shakespeare comments on the limitations of the objective mind and its ability to understand existence: ““There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. Our mind’s view of the existence of the universe and its significance is blindered by our reliance on what we can observe with our senses, and our ability to correctly organise and interpret what we perceive.

We thus believe that the universe is some vast mechanical location, and while material energies are at work, it is a vacant, dead space, without any essential meaning other than as the backdrop of our own lives on a minor planet, in a minor solar system, in a minor arm of a minor galaxy in one corner of the vast universe. Some modern thinkers have, alternatively, likened the universe to a type of hologram within which we play act our existence.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna describes for Arjuna the action of the Time-Spirit. It is clear from his statement that there is a pervasive, active consciousness in the universe that creates, guides, controls and develops the rolling out of the manifestation. It is our limitation of perception and understanding that prevents us from experiencing and interacting with the consciousness throughout all forms, beings, entities and, indeed, the entire universe in its own right.

In the Taittiriya Upanishad, there is a fascinating passage that recounts levels of conscious awareness above that of the human level, as it describes the measure of bliss of each successively more refined conscious being. We term these beings with higher levels of conscious awareness, angelic beings, gods, demigods, or creators.

The Rig Veda, in Mandala X, Sukta 129 briefly describes the levels of consciousness and their respective role in the creation. “There were Casters of the seed, there were Greatnesses; there was self-law below, there was Will above.”

A disciple asks: “Is time only subjective or it is something concrete like a personality?”

The Mother writes: “All forces are personal; all things in Nature are personal. But if we consider them as impersonal things, our relation with them is impersonal.”

“Take for instance what has just happened. If you are a meteorologist and have calculated all the wind-currents and all that, and say, ‘Given that this has happened, that will happen, and there will be so many days of rain, and all that.’ So this is a force for you, which we are compelled to call a force of Nature, and you can do nothing about it except look on quietly and wait for the number of days to pass. But if it happens that you have this personal relation with the little conscious entities which are behind the wind, behind the storm, behind the rain, the thunder, behind all these so-called forces of Nature, which are forces and personal forces, if you have a personal relation with the and can create a kind of friendship through this relation, instead of considering them as enemies and inexorable mechanisms which you have to put up with without being able to do anything, perhaps you could manage to establish a slightly more friendly relation and have an influence over them and ask them: ‘Why do you feel like blowing and making the rain fall, why don’t you do it elsewhere?’ “

“And with my own eyes I have seen… I have seen this here, seen it in France, seen it in Algeria… the rain falling at a particular, altogether fixed place, and it was exactly a place where it absolutely needed to rain, because it was dry and there was a field which needed watering, and at another place there was… at a distance from here to the end of the hall, at the other place there was a small sunlit spot, everything was dry, because to have the sun there was necessary. Naturally, if you seek the scientific point of view, they will explain this to you very scientifically. But I indeed have seen it as the result of an intervention… someone who knew how to ask it and obtained it.”

“In Algeria I saw not a few things like that, very interesting ones. And there, just because there was a certain atmosphere of a little more real knowledge it could be said, there were little entities, as for example entities which handled snow, you see, which produced snow, and which could come, enter a room and tell someone, ‘Now snow should fall here!’ (It had never snowed in that country, never.) ‘Snow! you are joking. So near the Sahara it is going to snow?’ ‘It must, because they have planted fir trees on the mountain, and when we see fir trees, we come. The fir trees are there to call us; so we come.’ And so, you see, there was a discussion, and the little being went away with the permission to bring snow, and when it had gone, there was a little pool of snow water on the floor, melted snow which had turned into water. It was physical… and the mountain was covered with snow. In Algeria! It is very near the Sahara, you go down a few kilometres and you are at the Sahara. Someone had playfully covered all the hills with fir trees. ‘The fir tree belongs to cold countries. Why do y ou call us? We are coming.’ All this is a true story, it is not an invention.”

“All depends on your relation. This too, it is quite possible the meteorologist scholars would have been able to explain. I know nothing about it, they explain everything one wants.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch. 4 Cosmic and Universal Forces, pp.84-86